Heeding the Heart
A Mindfulness-Based Course to Explore and Transform Your Emotional Experience
"I have been learning the most pressing and necessary lesson of all: how to keep opening wider my own heart".
Alice Walker, writer.
The Heeding Your Heart Program is based in the mindfulness teachings conveyed in the Minding Your Mind course. As such, applicants must have completed the Minding Your Mind course prior to starting or have studied mindfulness in another setting – achieving a basic understanding of mindfulness principles, as well as already being well-practiced in sitting and walking meditations. It is fine if you do not have a daily home practice. The course will provide support in engaging in a consistent practice.
In the Minding Your Mind course, we learned how to pay attention on purpose, in the present-moment and non-judgmentally. This basic skill underlies the work we will do next, in exploring the regions of the heart. Recognizing that your emotional experience often defines your quality of life, you will examine emotional habits that may hijack your path to happiness and peace.
In the course, you will…
Learn to identify Fear-Based behaviors
Sometimes, the impact of our emotions on decision-making slips below our radar of consciousness. For example, we may find ourselves driven to seek out connection with others, without realizing that fear of isolation is the underlying motivator of our behavior. Independent of how the behavior manifests externally, when we are deciding from fear, we’re living in fear. We’re skilled at ignoring such an inconvenient truth, especially when it serves the ego.
Learn to identify the voice of the ego
The ego, that mental construct that we identify as me, myself, I, will receive a thorough examination in the Heeding Your Heart course. The ego distinguishes “me” from “other”, and is invested in being right, often at the cost of our emotional well-being and the well-being of those around us. The repair strategies that the ego uses include self-justification, anger, violence, defensiveness, self-delusion and blaming, among others. Most conflict in our lives can be traced back to the ego’s never-ending struggle to be right.
Learn to make decisions from beyond the ego
The course will explore the situation when we are of multiple minds about a decision, and how we can identify the sources of these different internal voices so that we make decisions from a place of love, rather than from a place of fear. In this part of the practice, we’ll work with creating and using intentions to guide our decision-making.
Learn to accept that emotions are part of your humanity
In addition to establishing a better understanding of our emotional experience, the Heeding Your Heart course will provide training in accepting aspects of our emotional experience that we tend to deny and reject (though these suppressed emotions still impact us at a subconscious level). We can feel conflicted when we experience emotions that we have been socialized not to express – like anger. We’ll come to understand that the seeds for all emotional experience lies within each and everyone of us, and that we can choose which of these emotional seeds we water. We’ll also explore how to work with difficult emotions mindfully.
Learn to communicate about emotional experience
Another important element of the Heeding Your Heart course is communication. You will learn ways to communicate with your loved ones about your anger, your fear, your joy. We will practice, in class and at home, methods of communication that promote compassion and understanding, where we might otherwise experience fear and harming. We will also explore the important issue of Forgiveness, and the healing benefits of forgiving ourselves and others.
Fair warning…
This is not a course for the faint-hearted. Diving into one’s emotional life can lift a mirror that may reflect aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to embrace. The ego is going to rebel against this work, since it doesn’t want to allow the possibility of not always being right. The ego is expert at rationalizing any behavior to maintain the appearance of righteousness. This course will challenge the ego’s dominance, and invite you to explore more heart-based ways of living.
Benefits
The benefits for the work you undertake in this course include
Background
The Heeding Your Heart Course reflects an integration of teachings from Buddhist scholars (Thich Nhat Hanh, Jack Kornfield, Pema Chodron, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and others) as well as insights from my own experience with private clients using mindfulness techniques to work with difficult emotions.
Like the Minding Your Mind course, the Heeding Your Heart course is experientially based, and relies on your participation in the home practice, including a commitment to a daily mindfulness practice of your choice and additional home-based exercises exploring your emotional experience.
The course also includes a Silent Day of Mindfulness, giving you an opportunity to deepen your connection with yourself in an uninterrupted stream of mindful moments.
Schedule
We will meet for 6 consecutive Tuesday evenings from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. beginning April 6th. The Silent Day of Mindfulness will be held on Saturday, May 8th from 9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Location
Please note my new Oakland address: 12 Shetland Court, Oakland.
Tuition & Registration
Early Bird Registration (prior to March 1st) is $300.
Registration after March 1st is $350.
A $50 deposit will reserve your space in the class (limit 10 students). Full payment is due on April 6th at our first meeting. Please include your name, email and phone number with your check and mail to:
Domonick Wegesin
12 Shetland Court.
Oakland, CA 94605
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Questions?
Please contact Domonick with questions by emailing: Domonick@TheOpener.com or calling 510-219-1851.
Heed your heart. This is an opening to your intuitive knowing. The mind can make excuses. The heart knows.
Follow your heart.
